This.
Don’t give up because right now I’m not sure what the error was and I don’t think they are either.
It may not get your daughter into the school but it will give you answers about what the error actually was.
Just to be clear, you have a physical letter from SP saying that your daughter was accepted to SOTA? If not, what are the nature of the e-mails?
My understanding is that you have an initial acceptance, and then a chain of e-mails in which a supposed error in registration is corrected. If that’s the case, you need to push them and find out WTF is going on. Whatever the end result is, they seem to be making a clusterfuck of the situation. If they’ve screwed up twice already, there’s a high chance that they’ve now screwed up a third time.
Push to see the testing results and whatever evaluation criteria they use. If they did make a few mistakes and your daughter didn’t qualify, than drop it. If she did qualify and there’s been some registration errors, argue until she gets in.
Yeah, I read your posts.
Then why are you suggesting that the OP harass people who can’t do anything about the situation?
Ok. I have decided I will do a bit of fighting in the following ways.
- I will ask for the test scores. Can’t hurt.
- I will ask for the principal. Can’t hurt.
I won’t lawyer up or call the news. My daughter has accepted the situation, so I can’t be kicking up that kind of dust.
Yes, but it’s the school VP that’s telling Nzinga that her daughter didn’t qualify, in contradiction to the letter and the later email exchange, and using that explanation for why the daughter was turned down. When asked about it, he immediately lied and went on the offensive. It’s not unreasonable to expect the school administration to explain itself and to produce evidence that a mistake happened on their end.
Honestly, the VP sounds shady as hell. I wouldn’t be surprised if the principal knew nothing about it. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they reversed course and allowed Nzinga’s daughter in at the first sign that she was going to make a public stink and that legal professionals wanted to take a closer look at the admissions process.
Go for it, I say. Unleash the lawyers! You have nothing to lose here. They, on the other hand, seem to have something to hide.
What do you think is the VP’s motive for this nefarious plot? What is he hiding? What grievance would a lawyer be pursuing?
Dunno as to his motives. Can imagine all sorts of things but I don’t really care. It’s the way he lied about his earlier conversation with Nzinga and then immediately went all “Respect Mah Integreteh!!!” when she called him on it that makes it seem like a guy with a guilty conscience. He may be a simple blowhard. He may be covering his ass. Either way, nuts to him. I would have no hesitation about ruining his day.
As for what grievance the lawyers would be pursuing - “Irregularities in the admissions process” is how I expect they’d phrase it. Nzinga has evidence in the form of the letter and in the follow up email conversation that her daughter qualified. Now Vice Principal Jerkov is claiming she didn’t. He can protest all he wants but I don’t see why anyone is obligated to take his word for it.
I’d expect the lawyers to want to know precisely how the auditions worked, how the scoring worked, what Nzinga’s scores were, how that compared to other applicants, who authorized the letter, what mistake was made, why no attempt to was made by the school to contact Nzinga and explain the mistake, who changed her admission status from being in SOTA to a different school, how is that this Brian was able to transfer her back to SOTA and then how was it that her status was changed yet again?
As for what remedy I’d expect the lawyers to seek - oh that’s easy. Nzinga’s daughter’s admission to SOTA. I wouldn’t even seek apologies or anything. Just a simple correction to an administrative error.
Unless the school can provide comprehensive evidence that Nzinga’s daughter’s scores didn’t qualify and that the process was fair, and that the school compounded its error by not calling and discussing it with her, I would feel no hesitation about expecting them to honor their acceptance letter or holding their feet to the fire if they didn’t.
What makes you think that remedy is justified by test scores? What makes you think anything needs to be remedied at all?
If you do decide to escalate the matter, the way to go is probably not through a lawyer, but rather with your local city/county supervisor or assemblyman. They have assistants that will often look into why the school made the mistake in the first place, and managed to screw up the communications with you so badly since then.
I don’t know about where you are, but in California, an inquiry from a political entity gets a lot of attention from the school bureaucracy, and hopefully you can get a more thorough explanation of the snafu.
He may not have intentionally lied, maybe he has a faulty memory, maybe he confused you with somebody else (maybe they fucked with more kids than yours this summer). Regardless, he’s a dick. Don’t let one blowhard fuck up your kid’s plans for the future.
Why can’t you call this secretary back? She used the term “mistake.” Maybe she can give you an idea as to what kind of mistake it was.
Dio, let’s just stop this show before you take it any further. Nzinga is black, if I’m recalling correctly, so her daughter is probably black, which is reason enough to guess why a randon admin might have something out for her. Stop apologizing for a fuckwad you’ve never even met, and stop supposing his intentions are noble. All we know about him from this post is that he’s twisted the truth and been a total dick to Nzinga when she tried to call him on it. Where do you get off assuming that he’s right?
I’m just not assuming there’s anything malicious going on as opposed to some stupid mistake. I highly doubt there’s anything racist about it. As I keep saying, this VP would have had nothing to do with whether or not the kid got placed. he’s just a messenger, even if not a very good one.
Sounds like a good plan.
Good luck, Nzinga. You should be pushing this. Don’t be afraid of being unreasonable; too much is on the line to be passive with people who hold your daughter’s educational future in their hands.
The difference between a kid that ends up reaching the top of the stars and one who ends up falling through the cracks often boils down to how much a pain in the ass a mother is willing to be to some school administrators.
I still don’t understand why you aren’t going higher than a secretary at SP. I’m not saying call lawyers or reporters, just call the head of Student Placement. Either the multiple communications from SP were incorrect, in which case they might squeak you in to correct their own error, or they were correct and the VP is saying whatever she needed to get you out of her office.
And if your daughter isn’t that upset, maybe she was only trying this to make you happy. You should have a heart to heart with her to make sure she’s committed to the extra rigors of this school.
StG
How’s about the difference between a school with a graduation rate of 93%, vs. a district wide four year graduation rate of 51%?
Get your head out of your ass and consider that maybe this is more important than you have decided it is in your mind.
(Sure, you can say that cream will rise anywhere - but if you were a parent in this school district would you really not be trying to get your kid into one of the demonstrably better schools in the system?)
Preach. I have found this often to be the case in my experience.
Yeah, this. Don’t walk away; ask for answers and expect them.
Sorry about the crying thing–that is just the worst. :mad:
I find it very hard to believe that the application process involves sending letters of acceptance to students who won’t then be placed in the program. What would be the purpose of that?
The original letter may have been sent in error, in which case there might be nothing accomplished by taking it further. Or the letter was correct and a mistake was made in the process after it - which might not be fixed without being a squeaky wheel.
Thank you all so much for the support. I never thought I was the type to need huggles in MPSIMS, but these huggles sure do feel good.
My daughter is dorky and awkward and shy around kids her age. The city highschools are pretty rough, the kids are a bit more street savvy, and she just really wanted this with everything in her. SOTA has not only the highest grad rate of all the city schools, but it boasts tons of other advantages. Her former teacher and principal encouraged this audition and wrote a glowing letter of recommendation (letters of recommendation are required by SOTA).
I really thought this would be good for her, and so did she. But if she didn’t nail it in the audition, she just didn’t nail it, and I need to accept that. Her portfolio was beyond reproach for sure, but I have no idea if she choked on the insta-write portion of the audition, there in the classroom setting.
I do think it is extra sucky that the SOTA VP told me that if SP puts her on the list, she will be admitted and then went back on his word. Because SP DID agree to put her on the list, and the VP didn’t keep his word.
Nevertheless, I will get the scores, drop my case on the principal, accept the results. Thanks again guys, for the support.
Sure, but I wouldn’t be imagining conspiracy theories if their scores weren’t good enough.